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Homosexuality is Unnatural

The idea that homosexuality is unnatural is held widely not just among the religiously tainted but also by those who support the rights of LGBT persons.

Perhaps this is because the experience of same-sex attraction is so incredibly difficult to imagine for heterosexuals that they prefer to let it remain unexamined. After all, putting yourself in another person’s shoes to empathize with their subjective experiences is a difficult process in itself—and in the case of homosexuality, this may demand a visceral experience that can be quite unsettling.

Hence, even those who have gay friends and are in support of recognizing the full rights of LGBT individuals hold a deep-seated belief that homosexuality is not “natural” and “not how things were meant to be.”

Given this, the most common defense of homosexuality then boils down to a matter of choice—the right to have a personal preference in romance, even though it might violate “natural” norms.

This is the premise that needs to be challenged and discarded.

Homosexuality is not a matter of choice. It is not a preference. It is completely natural. Indeed, it can also be an expression of the grandly spiritual.

The Factual Explanation

But let’s begin from a purely probabilistic calculation: in a population of over seven billion human beings on Earth, it is a lack of imagination to insist that all the billions of people will manifest only one kind of sexual behaviour in nature, namely, the heterosexual behaviour. Just by the pure mathematics of it, the amount of potential combinations and permutations possible to the human species in the kinds of sexual, psychological, emotional, and physical manifestations are limitless.

Homosexuality is merely one naturally occurring variant in the great spectrum of human psycho-sexual possibilities. This variety is the natural order of things. Diversity in every aspect of nature is the motive power that drives procreation and evolution.

However, the religiously tainted claim that homosexuality is an aberration only observed in humans. Again, this is an ignorance of the available evidence. There is ample amount of documented evidence of homosexual and bisexual behavior in various non-human species. A quick search on Wikipedia reveals that same-sex behavior is a nearly universal phenomenon in the animal kingdom, common across species.

What’s more, the human species itself has documented evidence of homosexual and bi-sexual behaviour since its earliest history, agnostic to cultures and geographies.

The Moral Case for Homosexuality

But beyond these existential facts about homosexuality lie the more important question: Is homosexuality an immoral indulgence? Does it degrade the dignity of human nature?

You will see at the end of this article that the answer is a resounding “No!”

The religiously tainted have dominated the moral conversation, and it is time we exposed the root of their arguments. At the root of their moral assertions lie a fear of confronting their own self-loathing, cowardice, and un-reason.

The religiously tainted argue that just because homosexuality is observed in the animal kingdom, it does not mean that humans should emulate the same and “become like animals!” We have a moral compass, they chide us. We can and must choose to be better than mere animals.

Notice carefully, however, that there is no reason given beyond a bald moral assertion that human sexual pleasure is degrading. There is an implicit admission of shame and guilt associated with human sexual desire, as if prima facie it is wrong and therefore must be suppressed at all costs.

This debased projection of the human capacity to experience desire, joy, and ecstasy as the cause of shame and guilt is the filthy consequence of a mind—and a culture—obsessed with the mechanics of sex, not the experience of sex.

But even keeping that aside, what is more specious is the view that homosexuality is the consequence of a mindless, perverse pursuit of the sexual stimulus. Apparently, according to the religiously tainted, nature has arranged the sexual organs of male and females to “fit” in a particular manner that facilitates procreation. Since this is the only natural way to procreate, it therefore must be the only moral way to have sex.

Like almost everything that the religiously tainted claim, this is yet another illogical and specious jump from a physical phenomenon to a moral conclusion. If the act of sex is justified purely because of the resultant ability to procreate, then by that logic all manner of non-procreative sexual activity will need to be immoral. That would include everything from healthy behaviors like masturbation to every act of sex even among married heterosexual couples that does not lead to child-bearing.

Further, if the capacity to procreate is what decides the morality of a sex act, then heterosexual couples cannot morally indulge in a host of intimate, loving, and celebratory activities like foreplay, cunnilingus, and fellatio. Finally, the act of wagging a finger on the private, bedroom activities of heterosexual lovers simply because they do not intend to have children is itself a highly egregious moral offense that cannot be explained away.

Are We Humans or Sex Organs?

But there are some very important questions that confront the religiously tainted, if they choose to honestly grapple with this topic:

Is it really dignified to interpret the complexities of our sexual desires as little more than the arrangement of organs that “fit” together in our bodies—like pipes in the bathroom plumbing system? Is it possible to explain all of human desires—those heights of emotional and sexual experience that motivate marvels of art and architecture—as products of only titillated sexual organs? Can the entirety of the human sexual experience be reduced to the activity of our sex organs?

The religiously tainted say yes, because it is their view of human sexuality that sees nothing spiritual, nothing transcendent, nothing holy, nothing reverent in sex. They are the ones who truly describe the human sexual experience as that of mere meat groping in the dark to find the right fit.

In contrast, humans are the only species in nature with the power to recast our entire existential being into a sexual organ. We are the only species that can transform our whole bodies and our minds into the service of sexual exploration and ecstasy. Indeed, we have the power to reach dizzying heights of emotional and psychological experience without even any physical contact.

This is proper to the fullest nature of human beings. This is when humans rise to all that is possible to its own nature.

Those who call this human potential “unnatural” and “against the order of nature” are actually not ignorant of what it means to be human; they are afraid of it. It is fear of the realization that they lack self-esteem and that they loathe their own bodies that drives their hatred for all that is possible to us as a species.

Implicitly, they realize that it is this fear which allows them to hide comfortably behind the dark pronouncements of their religions and traditions.

ADDENDUM

The only hurdle facing humanity in accepting homosexuality or any other diverse forms of human pleasure as legitimate forms of human psycho-sexual experience is the primitive Judeo-Christian morality that has pervaded our civilizations for more than 2000 years, infecting even non-Judeo-Christian cultures now.

This morality is frought with the guilt and shame of sex–any sex, not just homosexual sex–and hence, it attempts to minimize the possibilities and wide range of sexual indulgences possible to humans. The ideal at the end of the road, of course, is the complete and total eradication of the sexual experience–as perfected by their moral personification, Jesus Christ, and as attempted for centuries by the celibate clergy of the Catholic Church.

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Related quote
“Observe the false dichotomy offered: man’s choice is either mindless, “instinctual” copulation – or marriage, an institution presented not as a union of passionate love, but as a relationship of “chaste intimacy”, of “special personal friendship”, of “discipline proper to purity”, of unselfish duty, of alternating bouts with frustration and pregnancy, and of such unspeakable, Grade-B-movie-folks-next-door kind of boredom that any semi-living man would have to run, in self-preservation, to the nearest whorehouse.”

7 Responses to “Homosexuality is Unnatural”

D.Bandlersaid

I agree with your main point. However, there are Christians who argue for a transcendent view of sex and marriage and on that basis argue that homosexuality is not transcendent and meaningful. Here is a link to Larry Auster, a Traditionalist whose whole agenda is to argue that modern liberalism (both Classical and Leftist) is inherently immoral and subjectivist, where he argues that homosexuality can not be moral:

This really seems the only stable and satisfying setting for sex. It’s impossible in the case of homosexual acts, though, because the bodies of the participants do not form an objective functional unity that points by its nature beyond the act itself and beyond the personal interests of the participants. (Many heterosexual acts — extramarital affairs, heterosexual sodomy, and acts involving artificial contraception — also place themselves outside this setting.)

From the foregoing, it seems that sex can have stable positive meaning only in the form of acts that express marital union. In other settings it can not successfully express a love that transcends pleasure and personal interest, because its meaning is too much a matter of interpretation. One cannot bootstrap into the transcendent through interpretation. Sex does aspire to transcendence, however, and in a setting that denies that aspiration it takes on an element of meretriciousness or willful fantasy — it can’t mean what it wants to mean and pretends to mean. It therefore becomes crippled, perverse or abusive. Hence the tendency, not just in the gay world but in modern sexual life generally, toward role-playing, instability, betrayal, disillusion, and the abusive side of sexuality. Participation in activities that point toward such things may be a temptation, but not a good.

This is a Platonic view of sex but it is a spiritual one. Not all Conservative criticisms of homosexuality are materialstic. If procreation is your standard, homosexuality can never be legitimized and marriage and culture must end up being a patriarchal, traditionalist institution. I don’t agree with that but I do wonder if a society can survive and prosper without strong nuclear families. The Left and the egalitarian welfare state they have created (with complicity from Republicans) are destroying the family (see Charles Murray’s new book). I see that, but part of me wonders if sexual freedom (female and homosexual) is not inherently politically destabilizing.

I agree. Unfortunately, it’s only when someone they know turns out to be gay that people start opening up to these possibilities. Homophobia is instilled in them so deeply by society that only their love for a son, daughter, sibling or parent can break those chains.

In my post, I had argued against exactly that viewpoint that the Christians believe their projection of sex among only male and female is the transcendant view of sex.

I noted that actually, it is *not*. That indeed, the Judeo-Christian view of sex is actually inhuman, degrading, and animalistic.

Their view of sex is obsessed with the *mechanics* of sex, which they consider necessary to achieve the transcendence.

In contrast, I had argued that the right approach to sex is to focus on the *experience*. This approach recasts the entire human body–and the mind’s capacity to experience ecstasy–to achieve the holistic experience of sexual pleasure. We are more than our sex organs, I argued. We can achieve orgasms without even any physical contact.

The Judeo-Christian view of sex is not platonic; that would be according it too much respect. It is, properly, perverse. For them, sex is fundamentally about organs that fit together. That’s it.

And there’s nothing spiritual in that, their persistent protestations to the contrary, notwithstanding.

The only hurdle facing humanity in accepting homosexuality or any other diverse forms of human pleasure as legitimate forms of human psycho-sexual experience is the primitive Judeo-Christian morality that has pervaded our civilizations for more than 2000 years. This morality is frought with the guilt and shame of sex–any sex, not just homosexual sex–and hence, attempts to minimize the possibilities and wide range of sexual indulgences possible to humans. The ideal, of course, is the complete, total, eradication of the sexual experience–as perfected by their moral personification, Jesus Christ, and as attempted by the celibate clergy of the Catholic Church.

I agree completely with your arguments Ergo. I am gay, was born this way and have always been completely comfortable with what I am.

It seems to me that today religion is one of the most potent weapons of mass destruction. Everyone seems to be justifying their acts of violence because “my religious book says so”. The religious minded are also equally sure that if they continue to kill, maim and hate people unlike them in thoughts and actions their place in “heaven” is assured. Religion has long ago outlived its purpose – instill basic morality into the human. Things like “respect each other, etc.” make sense always. The problem is when basic morality has large doses of dogma ladled with it. Things like, “thou shall not sleep with a man as thou sleepest with a woman”, and other such illogic.

Missionaries have, for centuries, been “baptizing” the “savages” into their hocus pocus. I, a “savage”, have for eons considered that the “moon is a God” and you come along and want me to abandon my “heathen beliefs” and force me to bow before the “One True God”, who is the real idiot?

I fail to understand how some religious poems allegedly intoned thousands of years ago by men can have the slightest relevance in the world of 21st century and beyond.

D.Bandlersaid

Their view of sex is obsessed with the *mechanics* of sex, which they consider necessary to achieve the transcendence.

That is NOT their view. Their view is that sex is only proper when it is in the context of marriage. Marriage, according to their view, gives sex its meaning its aim is the creation of children and therefor the continuity of society and culture. A Conservative who believes this would say that “a mother does not just give birth to a child, she gives birth to the future.”

These traditionalists are not viewing sex as mechanistic. Did you even read the essay that I linked too? They view sex as only moral when it exists in a context that advances Society and Culture. It is Platonic because a family is seen as something more than the happiness of both individuals, it is seen as a form that is larger than the sum its parts. A whole that exists to be a bridge between past and future. How can you call that view shallow and mechanistic?

I consider myself a Randian but I see this traditionalist view of sex and marriage as being interesting. You are doing what most Leftists do. You are portraying ALL Christian opponents to sexual liberation and homosexual freedom as knuckle dragging bigots who base their arguments on “god said so”. That is nonsense. Christianity has a 2000 year history of intellectual argumentation. It is not so simplistically idiotic as you make it out to be.

It is, properly, perverse. For them, sex is fundamentally about organs that fit together. That’s it.

No, that is not it. Read Austers blog post. LEARN what a true Christian traditionalist thinks is the essence of marriage and sex. It is not about organs fitting in to each other. That is moronic. The traditionalist view is about the raising of healthy children and the preservation of CULTURE. You’re arguments have not even addressed this.

Lastly, you bitch and moan about Christianity. Do you not see the evil and the damage being wrought by the Left? Most of them who are secularists.

D.Bandlersaid

It seems to me that today religion is one of the most potent weapons of mass destruction.

This is an idiotic statement. There is only one religion that aims to destroy all that do not believe in it and that religion is Islam. But what is preventing a full, just and morally certain defense against Islam? There is one true answer to that and that is THE LEFT. And the left is the full consistent embodiment of post-modern philosophy which has been attacking Christianity for over two centuries.

It is the skepticism, the relativism and the egalitarianism of the Left, and their soulmates the Republicans, that is emboldening and unleashing the world’s most evil religion. And in case you haven’t noticed it, the left is a secular phenomenon; at least it is given its power by secular academics.

So, a secular force is behind the unleashing of Islam and this person is condemning religion; ie Christianity. I am not a Christian but you do see how easy it is to argue against this type of anti-Christian nonsense. During the 19th century, Islam was weak and the West was strong and Christianity, while restrained, was respected. Today the West is weak and Islam is strong and Christianity is constantly being spit on by secularists.

if you wish to get any respect here on my blog, then use a vocabulary that is devoid of your expletives. It just goes to show the desperation of your emotional attachment to a view point than any respectable substance to your argument.

Having said that, any thinker who believes in the particularly Christian god and the Christian view of the world is not worthy of the labels “thinker” or “intellectual.” There’s absolutely nothing that they can contribute to the intellectual landscape of ideas that is unique to their Christian worldview. Anything that they happen to get right is something that could be achieved without the Christian worldview–using purely secular, rational methods.

In the context of this discussion, I mean to say that the Christian view of marriage and sex is just as wrong as the rest of the Christian moral system and worldview, regardless of how desperately they garb it under intellectualized jargon.

Just to give one example, you said: ” Marriage, according to their view, gives sex its meaning its aim is the creation of children and therefor the continuity of society and culture. ”

Why?

Give me a rationally grounded, metaphysically derived proof for the following questions:

1) Why should marriage *exclusively* derive its meaning from the ability of sexual organs that fit together to procreate and therefore ensure continuity of the species?
2) If marriage does indeed derive its meaning exclusively from the ability of the species to procreate and continue its species, then why don’t we accord the recognition of marriage to non-human species that engage in pair-bonding activities?
3) Can marriage then be extended to more than 2 humans who want to get together to procreate and produce children? Two husbands and one wife permitted under this definition of marriage?

In conclusion, I’m simply not invested in arguing against the Christian moral worldview because it is so deficient in basic intellectual rigor that I feel shortchanged in this dialog. I feel I am the only one offering wisdom and insight here and getting nothing substantial in return.